Update on the Board from the ISQua President

On 12 & 13 March, your ISQua Board held its annual retreat followed by the Board meeting.  I am pleased to summarize our deliberations herewith.

On 12 & 13 March, your ISQua Board held its annual retreat followed by the Board meeting.  I am pleased to summarize our deliberations herewith.

Arriving in Dublin midst the escalating COVID-19 crisis, we met together for 2 days.  The retreat was extremely rich in both content and discussion.  Our current Strategic Plan ends in December 2020 and thus we are beginning to set the stage for the next Strategic Plan.

Identified during our Board retreat of 2019, this retreat follow-up on the following important topics:

1) An update of the status of our current Strategic Plan (2017-2020) was presented by our CEO and the ISQua team.

2) The next presentation and discussion focused on Horizon Scanning.  In this session, led by Jeffrey Braithwaite and Ellen Joan van Vliet, we discussed the future of health and health systems and considered opportunities and threats, and the implications for ISQua. 

3) A workshop led by Steve Clark and Ezequiel Garcia-Elorrio focused on our potential role in generating advisory work, research and grants.  We were divided into 2 groups and identified strategies in these areas and priorized them into categories of easy, harder, and good idea yet difficult to implement.

4)  The next session titled ‘Fit for Purpose’ was coordinated by Tricia Woodhead and Jacqui Stewart.  Jacqui began by summarizing a document focusing on Board/CEO relationships, clarity of which is important for effective governance.   Next, Tricia reviewed leadership behaviours, and role, behaviours & outcomes and spoke about Collective Leadership.

5)  The next session was facilitated by BK Rana, Sara Yaron and Shin Ushiro.  We discussed 6 strategic questions such as ‘What type of organization do we want to be?’ and ‘How do we ensure sustainability?’.  This session resulted in minor changes to both the Vision and Mission.  We spent 10 minutes on each question, resulting in a wealth of ideas on which to build. 

6)  The day concluded by the reports from the Raconteurs – David Vaughan summarized the key messages and themes of the morning session and Bruno Lucet summarized the afternoon session. 

As you can see, the entire Board was engaged in facilitation roles and everyone actively participated throughout the day.

ISQua staff will develop a report for us that consolidates the comments made throughout the day.  A working group of the Board will work with Peter and staff to sift through this report and develop an action plan.  Our goal is to focus on key items to facilitate advancing ISQua and contribute to developing the next Strategic Plan.  We are sensitive to the workload of staff and to being realistic as to how much can be addressed and in what timeframe. 

The Board meeting was held the following day, on 12 March, and consisted of the CEO update and reports of the various Board Committees, such as Finance and Audit (Chair – Steve Clark) and Corporate Governance (Chair – Jacqui Stewart).  Considerable time was spent discussing the upcoming annual conference to be held in Florence.  Given COVID-19 situation various scenarios were discussed.  There will be further dialogue about this in the coming 4 – 6 weeks. 

We were pleased to receive reports from the Chairs of our 2 new Advisory Committees, each of which has had one meeting.  Tricia Woodhead reported on the Knowledge Management, Networks and Communities of Practice Advisory Committee and Ezequiel Garcia-Elorrio reported on the Regions and LMIC Advisory Committee.  You will receive more information about the business and outputs of these committees within future updates from ISQua.

As you can see, we have an engaged Board and with well qualified members who are totally committed to ISQua and our contribution to improving the quality of health and healthcare globally.   My sincerest thanks are extended to all of our Board members and to Peter, our CEO, and our staff for their active contribution and dedication. 

Together we will continue making a difference.

Wendy Nicklin

ISQua President

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Nourhan, a quality and safety coordinator with eight years of experience in ambulatory healthcare in Lebanon, aims to deepen her understanding of the systemic and holistic approach to healthcare through this fellowship.

She aims to identify gaps and develop tailored interventions that address specific contexts rather than applying general solutions. Engaging with diverse professionals and perspectives during this educational journey will expand the application of these concepts across different cultural settings.

Nourhan emphasizes the importance of promoting a culture of continuous learning and improvement within healthcare institutions, considering it a vital leadership responsibility to integrate quality and safety initiatives into the organizational culture.

Nourhan's commitment to patient safety and quality management includes sourcing practical resources and transforming insights into actionable knowledge to drive continued progress in healthcare practices and outcomes.

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Elom Otchi

Elom is passionate about improving quality of care and patient safety outcomes.

In view of this, he has had the opportunity to work in various capacities with various organisations including AfIHQSA, WHO, UNICEF and others undertaking research, supporting the development of national quality policies and strategies, facilitating the establishment of quality governance systems across all the levels of the health sector and building capacity of national and sub-national quality leads/teams to institutionalize the practice of quality and patient safety across the continent.

He has also worked extensively across all levels of care in the health sector of Ghana, including leading the Quality & Patient Safety program in its largest teaching hospital.

I would like to use this Fellowship as a learning platform and an opportunity to acquire the requisite knowledge, skills and competencies to complement ongoing efforts by like-minded individuals and organizations to continuously advance improve the quality and patient safety in Ghana and the continent.

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Stephen Taiye Balogun

Stephen is a Senior Programme Officer at the Institute of Human Virology in Nigeria as well as Country Representative for Health Information for All (HIFA).

Stephen plans to use this opportunity to maximise his impact by championing the cause of patient safety and quality in Nigeria and across Africa.

Stephen says "Quality and safety is a major wheel through which universal healthcare coverage can be achieved. The goal is to be a bridge in the gap between the International Quality Improvement and Patient Safety community and my country to ensure rapid spread, adoption, implementation and practice."

We are looking forward to working with both Stephen and our 2020 winner Rhoda Kalondu over the next year.

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Dr Rhoda Kalondu

Rhoda is the Head of the Patient Safety Unit at Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi and wants to use this Fellowship to learn how to establish a culture of safety and develop systems for assessment and analysis at her institution, and more widely. As well as this, Rhoda intends to develop and execute an intervention to improve patient safety in Kenyatta National Hospital.

It is one thing to institute measures and processes for improvement, but quite another to change the culture of an environment. Rhoda's ambition to lead others in this change inspired the panel.

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Dr Subhrojyoti Bhowmick

I am an MBBS graduate from Calcutta University with a Gold Medal in Gynecology & Obstetrics.

I have completed M.D in Pharmacology from IPGME& R, Kolkata and have over 12 years of experience in the field of Clinical Research, Pharmacovigilance and Medication management in Hospitals.

I have completed certification in Clinical Research Administration & Project Management from Stanford University, USA and in Patient Safety from Johns Hopkins University, USA.

I am an Assessor for National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Health care providers (NABH), India assessing hospitals for medication safety and clinical quality standards and NABH Assessor for Ethics Committee Accreditation program in India as well.

I serve as the Chairperson, Institutional Ethics Committee of Health Point Hospital, Kolkata and am associated with 2 other Hospital ethics committees as a member.

I finished my Fellowship in Healthcare Quality from the International Society of Quality in Healthcare (ISQua) from Ireland in 2017.

I have published several research articles and have also authored a chapter on “Regulations governing Clinical Trial” in the book “Fundamentals of Clinical Trial & Research”.

I am a peer reviewer for prestigious international journals like the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, CNS Drugs and Drug Safety case reports.

I am the recipient of the UK Seth Oration Award for Best Clinical Pharmacology paper by the Indian Pharmacological Society in 2009 and the “Most promising Healthcare professional in Patient Safety in India” award by the Asian African Chamber of Commerce and Industry in October 2018.

Recently in April 2019, I received the Young Quality Achiever award by Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organizations (CAHO), India for 2019 for my work in the field of medication safety and clinical research.

I have a keen interest in teaching and am visiting adjunct faculty of Pharmacology at KMC, Mangalore, India and for Healthcare technology at MAKAUT, Kolkata, India.

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Currently, I am working as the Clinical Director of Academics, Medical Quality and Clinical Research at Peerless Hospital and B K Roy Research Centre, Kolkata.

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